Hobbies and Personal Stuff !

It's great to 'switch off' from music sometimes and concentrate on something entirely different.

When I was 16 I sailed my OK dinghy every day of the summer holidays. It was a great experience - the balmy still air days with the water like glass, idly drifting along - then the stormy, rainy days, very exciting. I would sometimes meet other friends out on the river and we would charge up and down a stretch of water together, on a broad reach, hanging out of our dinghies, spray flying everywhere.

I grew up on a small 7-acre property in a village called Chelmondiston in the county of Suffolk. My father was an aeronautical engineer and a Squadron Leader in the RAF. After World War II he started a Driving School, so from a very early age I developed a fascination for engines and........CARS !

I began driving old 'bangers' around our field when I was about 9. I also had some junky old motorbikes, starting off with a BSA Bantam and progressing to a Norton 350cc. Wow, I was so light that I couldn't push the kickstart down ! And Fast !!!!!!! I scared myself many times.

One day I fell off the Norton and when I went to pick the heavy bike up I damaged something in my back which eventually lead, many years later, to major back surgery.

Here's a collection of memories of those times -

I came to Australia on an extended working holiday, intending just to 'Have a look around'. I was so impressed that within 14 months I applied for citizenship ! After a few jobs in Perth I ended up driving an underground train and digger in a mining Camp at Kambalda just south of Kalgoorlie WA. I was the 'top gun' on my level because I liked to drive the train and the digger (called a 'Bogger') very fast. Occasionally I went too fast round a corner and the train would jump off the rails, then I'd have to jack the train back onto the tracks, working alone in the dark except for the helmet light. It was all great fun.

 I drove up to Cairns in an old XK Falcon, two speed automatic. The Nullaboor Desert crossing was a dirt road in those days. About 50 metres onto the dirt the entire exhaust system fell off ! I left it off until I was back on the bitumen several 100 Km's later. It was a noisy trip.

I was immediately impressed with Cairns. So much variety in climate, vegetation and scenery with the Tablelands on one side and the Great Barrier Reef so close on the other.

After a few months in Cairns I got a Suzuki 250cc trail bike and explored the area. I became interested in motorbike 'Enduro's' and progressed to a 'state of the art' 250cc Montessa enduro motorbike. The enduro's were fairly hard, often riding through virgin bush, fording creeks, climbing steep slopes (and falling off and rolling back to the bottom). It was great fun. The guys that used to win were so fast I couldn't understand how they could do it, although they were always breaking bones. Often less than half the riders would finish so my friends and I felt very good just competing and we nearly always achieved our ambition to finish.

Riding a trail-bike in the bush was another great experience. We rode the disused tracks that the old goldminers had used, single file horse trails and sometimes made our own way through the scrub. I've never seen as much wildlife as we did then. Kangaroos, Wild Pigs, Snakes, semi wild Brahman Bulls etc etc. To toughen up for Enduro's we had a weekly 100km route through the ranges behind Cairns, onto the Tablelands and then down the steep 'Gadgarra' track, another disused mining trail to Goldsborough and then back to Cairns.

More memories -

 My first computer was a Commodore 64. I taught myself programming and wrote a business application to keep track of my students and fees. It had music notes floating across the screen and an Abba song playing, 'Money, Money, Money' !!! (The Commodore 64 only had 37Kb's of memory so I had to remove the floating notes as there wasn't room for any pupil data.)

I began using MIDI soon after it was developed in the 1980's and upgraded to an Atari ST computer which had built-in Midi ports. Atari's were used to run the sequenced music in world class productions such as 'Cats' and 'Phantom of the Opera'.

I wrote several programs including one to print music. The Atari had 1 Meg of memory, which seemed huge at the time. It worked so well I still wonder why MS Windows and other programs need so much memory. I'm now using a 733Mhz Pentium III machine with 256 Meg of Ram - that's 256 Atari's.

I built this web site in just over a week. It's designed to load quickly and because it's an information site with a high level of text, I've kept the design simple. I wrote it in HTML using Word 97 and then edited the HTML in notepad. It's an interesting challenge to try and get each browser to display the page the way it's intended. Another challenge is to impress the Search engines. But enough of the 'Nerd Talk'..............

Back to Sailing - My wife and I had many adventures sailing our 12ft Heron dinghy. Two favourite trips were from Yorkeys Knob to Double Island and Wonga Beach to Snapper Island - 10 miles is a long way in a small dinghy ! One day on Tinaroo dam I could see a big summer thunderstorm coming and anticipating big winds we set off in the Heron, waiting for the breeze. When the squall came we shot off, at what must be terminal velocity for a Heron, hanging out of the dinghy to keep it upright, only our legs from the knees down inside the boat. It was very exciting. Suddenly BANG and I fell underwater. Toestrap broke ? No, MAST broke !

In 1985 we upgraded to LEGATO, an RL24 trailer sailer. It was in poor condition but cheap. We sailed out to Fitzroy, Green Island or the Barrier Reef nearly every weekend that I wasn't playing music.

A Picture of Legato five years later, I completely rebuilt her, fitted a taller mast and larger sails, repainted and even did my own signwriting !

Here's an excerpt from my story about LEGATO, called "A Respect for the Obvious" -

Legato won many races with the Cairns Yacht Club, the most memorable, and hardest, was a 16 week series held every week for four months.

We enjoyed many weekend sails out to Green or Fitzroy Island but we had an ambition to sail further south to the Frankland Islands. This enterprise took on a mythical quality as, time after time, the weather defeated our efforts.

The last attempt turned into a joke. We left a windy Fitzroy Island at dawn - the boat loaded down with stores, fuel etc, every hatch and opening taped down to stop leaks, our waterproofs on, triple reefed main, storm headsail AND the motor on nearly full throttle.

Bashing into a 28-knot headwind after leaving Fitzroy Island was uncomfortable - it was going to be a long day. After an hour and a quarter I looked back, expecting to see Fitzroy Island a fair way behind us but it was still very close. I gave up, turned around, stopped the engine and we sailed back in TWELVE MINUTES !!!!!!!!!! It was 'Time for a new boat'.

We found ALLEGRO, an Adams Ten Metre Racer/Cruiser, in Bundaberg in 1990. I sailed her up to Cairns with three mates, Alan, Mike and Readie. On the first night while I was on the helm the log showed us doing 18 knots down a wave - that was more like it. Alan looked behind into the wind and said, with his customary dry humour,"It must be windy"! My students often ask me if I go on the scary rides at the Cairns show each year. Hey, once you've sailed at night and on a yacht doing over twelve knots, you don't need fake excitement !

We've won many races & Regatta's on ALLEGRO, thanks to good team/crew work.

These races usually co-incide with a period of winter storms, we've had some interesting moments and during these races two yachts have sunk and 3 or more were dismasted.

We won the Cairns Yacht Squadron's, 'Around Admiralty Island Race' four times, (1992, 1993, 1994, & 1996).

I've sailed as far as Cardwell single-handed and even won a race single-handed ! We've enjoyed several years cruising around Dunk Island, the Family Islands, Hinchinbrook Island and have sailed as far south as the Whitsundays.

The serious face in this collection of memories is from the first night on Allegro, between Bundaberg and Cape Capricorn in mid-winter - it blew up to 30 knots plus and I was yet to discover how easily and safely Allegro steers downwind.

Back to Cars -

Being a car nut, I bond with every car I own. I've had 2 Austin 8's, 2 Mini's, a Wolsely, Hillman Imp, the two Triumph sports cars and so far eleven Ford's - including four Falcons, a Zephyr and a Fairlane. Quite a record !

There's something special about the Jaguar marque. I always wanted an 'E' Type but their value has risen to dizzy heights and it might be difficult and expensive to maintain one here in the 'Wet Tropics', this far from the UK factory.

A few years ago I transferred my affection to a new machine................

The CORVETTE STINGRAY.

The body is fibreglass, which can't rust.
The engine is the famous Chevy V8 that so many racing cars have from speedway to V8 supercars. Many of the parts are standard GM/Holden.
Yeah !

Most of my students know about the meaning of the words to my song 'Here in Cairns', in my beginners music book -

"Sunshine Days, Big Stingrays,..........."

'He who dies with the most toys, wins'

My friends & students know I love toys, even my electric pencil sharpener is a toy to me!

I'd like to ride a motorbike occasionally. A friend of mine once reckoned that when you get on a motorbike you become invisible to other traffic - very true. Still, there's nothing quite like riding a motorbike, it gives me some of the same feelings that I get from sailing, there is a freedom, a responsibility and you are exposed to nature's moods.

I've always been interested in flying things, of all sizes, Birds, Planes, Helicopters, Rockets, Kites etc - from Models to the real thing.

In 2002 I started flying model radio controlled planes with electric motors. I thought I was very good at Playstation games, so I was very surprised to discover how hard it is to fly a real model plane.

I met some other people who also 'fly electric' and we even fly indoors in a basketball court, the walls frequently get in the way !

I enjoy designing my own planes, part of the fun is finding out if an idea works and will fly. I'm now hooked on 3D flying -  click on the vid to watch me fly in the basketball court

Indoor Flying

My best slow flyer is a Red Biplane which is very manoeverable, although not  3D capable, and can fly slowly.

For outdoors I designed a World War II Spitfire using a template from a cardboard cutout (with a few modifications)

The Spitfire was a big success, although it's currently recovering from a bad crash due to pilot error - it's so hard to keep these planes in the air. I can basically fly around and land fairly well but I'm teaching myself aerobatics and I love flying around upside down. The controls are reversed when inverted so sometimes I go DOWN when UP would have been the correct choice.

I converted a $15 kid's polystyrene glider that I bought from Woolworths, it's shaped to look like an airliner -

I was flying it one day and a couple out walking stopped to admire it. After a few minutes I did a loop - the two people had, I think, identified with the plane as one they would fly on - so to see such a violent action really frightened them for a few seconds, it was very funny, one of them shouted,"How could it do that !!!!".

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I've got a flexifoil kite, it's so powerful it pulls me along the ground. I'm planning to use it to power the canoe and do a trip, perhaps Cairns to Ellis Beach. Steering and flying the kite may be a problem...........

I love racing cars on the Sony Playstation; it doesn't hurt when you crash !
My favourites are Ridge Racer 4, Need for Speed 3 & 4 (great Corvette C4) and of course Gran Tourismo.

Gran Tourism has a C2 Corvette Stingray with 427 horsepower, it's awesome. It doesn't hold the road too well so you can set up some major power slides and then watch the replay. I told my friends that I can feel when the tyres begin to skid and they laughed at me. Hey, they can't even do a lap without hitting something.

Having a yacht and doing your own maintenance means that eventually you have a lot of power tools - router, grinder, drill, heat gun, jigsaw, compound mitre saw. (Insert your own 'Tim the Toolman' AAAArrrrrr AAAAArrrrr here) I enjoy making and fixing things and have recently begun working more with timber, something I've always wanted to do. (It's a smell/feel/look thing)

I also enjoy digital imaging. I'm currently using Corel Draw and PhotoPaint 9 and specialise in transforming old and sometimes damaged images back to high quality as well as puting the wrong heads on different bodies ! My drawing skills reached their peak at the five year old level so manipulating images with a computer has allowed me to find & use my artistic creativity - anyway it's top fun !

I have several musical projects on the go. It's an exciting time to be a keyboard musician, we can program the entire band (er, well, except the singer) into a sequencer and make some mighty sounds. We can even burn our own CD's at home.

Oh...,.I forgot to say about the..........Yeah, I could go on - and perhaps I already did.
I can't believe you're still reading this page. I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for stopping by.

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